Football fans face hotel room shortfall

By Jason Morton, Staff Writer

Saturday

Aug 27, 2011 at 12:01 AM

While University of Alabama football fans across the state are making plans for seven weekend visits here this fall, more than two dozen people displaced by the April 27 tornado and many more relief workers are looking for other options.

TUSCALOOSA | While University of Alabama football fans across the state are making plans for seven weekend visits here this fall, more than two dozen people displaced by the April 27 tornado and many more relief workers are looking for other options.The hotel rooms where they are staying were booked long ago for game days. City officials estimate that 18 individuals and two families are still living in hotel rooms after losing their homes in the tornado.Add to this an untold number of non-local building contractors, city consultants and officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and it’s apparent that the arrival of tens of thousands of Crimson Tide fans will be disruptive.The city’s Incident Command team has been working with hotels across Tuscaloosa to ensure storm victims have a place to stay even if they have to relocate for a few days.“We’ve been communicating with the hotels and encouraging them to make sure they give plenty of notice to offer other accommodations,” said Robin Edgeworth, co-commander of the Incident Command. “We’re going to try and work with each one of (the storm victims) to help them out on accommodations.”Edgeworth said the aid would be offered only to residents who lost their homes in the tornado and could include a number of options, including transportation from a city hotel to one in Bessemer or Hoover.It could also include additional funding assistance through local charitable organizations.Julie Mosely, general manager at Microtel Inn & Suites, which barely missed being hit by the tornado, said one storm-displaced family is staying there. “We already had planned around that,” she said.The hotel, which is on Veterans Memorial Parkway, is not yet fully booked for UA’s season opener against Kent State next weekend, or for the next home game against North Texas on Sept. 17. It isn’t until Southeastern Conference rival Arkansas arrives on Sept. 24 that prior bookings will pose a challenge.Edgeworth said that, by then, city officials hope all storm victims will have found other options.However, Edgeworth said any fan wishing to give up his or her reserved room to a storm victim can call the city’s non-emergency hotline at 205-248-5311.“If anyone has any accommodations they can offer, we’ll be happy to try and partner them with anyone who might need that room,” Edgeworth said. “And we will do it every week as long as we need to.”Traci Channell, director of sales at Hilton Garden Inn on Hollywood Drive, said she has no storm victims who will be displaced this week, but some FEMA workers are going to have to relocate.“It’s really a difficult situation,” Channell said. “But the FEMA (officials), they’re being very cooperative.“We’re trying to make alternate reservations for them at sister properties at Birmingham, Bessemer and Hoover.”Tina Jones, sales manager for Courtyard by Marriott on Courtney Drive, said the storm victims who sought shelter there in the days and weeks after the tornado have since moved on to extended-stay motels.This leaves only contractors and other workers, and Jones said none of them have been asked to leave to make room for football fans seeking rooms or who already have reservations.“We are not displacing any people who are here long-term because of that,” she said. “We’ve done very well with it and it’s been a balancing act, but at the same time it’s important to be very sensitive.“The human factor is always the one that needs to win.” Hotel operators said the situation is similar to 2005, when local hotels had to accommodate evacuees and football fans after Hurricane Katrina.Gulf Coast residents fleeing that storm sought shelter all across the Southeast, including Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.In Tuscaloosa, football fans were quick to give up their hotel rooms when the season began.But as the season dragged on, that sense of generosity diminished.“In the beginning, our regular (customers) were paying for evacuees’ rooms,” said Katie Butler, general manager of Best Western on McFarland Boulevard. “But by the Tennessee game, they wanted to return.”Best Western still had evacuees by the third Saturday in October, so Butler and the hotel staff scrambled to free eight rooms occupied by Katrina evacuees in order to fulfill football fans’ reservations.They got help from area churches, and those families chose to remain in their new temporary homes or apartments.Butler said she doesn’t foresee a repeat of that problem now.“With (the tornado) being in our hometown, you’d think it would be a little harder,” she said, “but with Katrina it was definitely harder.”